Posts Tagged ‘circular reasoning’

People navigate society through archetypes. They understand a basic rule, and extrapolate from that to understand others. On a broader level, each age in history is defined by an event that succeeded which everyone else emulates.

Since the 1960s, our archetype in the West has been the overthrow of cultural order by hippies. Before that, it was the fall of Berlin. Before that, the jazz age flapper casting off a dying social order and being “free.” Before that, the victorious North freeing the slaves. Before that, the rag-tag band of underdog colonists driving back the most powerful nation on earth in a total Cinderella story.

When Leftist rioters burned, looted, vandalized and assaulted their way across Berkeley, California, many commentators mentioned the similarities to the 1960s activism. In both cases, an order was overthrown… except that in this case, Trump overthrew the Leftist order and the rioters were mainly raging against bourgeois armchair Leftists for not turning up the dial on their liberal beliefs to the setting “Full Soviet.”

Shields reportedly came to the defense of a man that was being attacked by people that wore masks that hid their identities. Shields later said, “They attacked him for being a Trump supporter, no other reason.”

After protecting the man, Shields confronted some of the masked protesters, saying, “You guys have your faces covered. You’re attacking people. You are being (expletive) fascists. Look at you guys, you’re (expletive) embarrassing. It’s not okay.”

In a Twitter post about the incident, Shields indicated that police officers and other citizens watched as the attack unfolded. He indicated that several people were attacked, and that he was involved “in a few scuffles” during the riot.

In other words, the cops were told to stand down. They might have done this because those above them agreed with the protesters. But it took a lot of people to not oppose that order. The simple reason is this: they wanted to avoid another Kent State, where pictures of dead students shoot around the world overnight and make your town or university a synonym for dead protesters.

The Left is playing a passive-aggressive game which is part of the circular reasoning at the core of all Leftist beliefs, which act by creating the assumption that a certain ideology is universally adopted, then styling those who fail to agree as attackers.

In this game, the Leftists pretend to be peaceful protesters and the media backs them up on that. Then, they attack, hoping to be injured so that they have a cause for victimhood and an excuse to counter-attack that much harder. They want us to lash out at them, so they can brutalize us. This is a classic “bullying” pathology; Leftists are bullies who are smart enough to hide behind altruism.

Their need for this victimhood relates to the swarm psychology of the mob. The mob cannot act proactively because it cannot agree, but it can react defensively if it feels one of its members has been injured. For this reason, to unite a mob, one must come up with a victim and claim that the victimization of that person will affect all. This creates Simian group panic and retaliation.

It does not make sense to view Leftism as an ideology so much as a pathology that hides behind ideology. There are few true Leftists, only people who are broken and who, when given an excuse for revenge, act it out with fervor to distract themselves from their own existential emptiness and shattered, purposeless, and disorganized lives.

The way around this is to get rid of equality. When someone brings up a protest, look at their history instead of just the single incident. Look at the psychology required to live their lives. And then, fear not writing them off as insane or incompetent, much like the army of baristas and waiters that burned down Berkeley.

Humans, when caught doing something wrong, have a tendency to blame the person who discovered them for interrupting their solipsistic fantasy in which they believed it was acceptable to act as they did. This is why Leftists accuse the right of being intolerant totalitarians while demonstrating those same traits as their normal operating procedure.

Because of this, Leftists tend to unironically psychoanalyze the right — known as “concern trolling” — and in doing so, reveal the roots of their own pathologies. For example, consider this Leftist analysis of the psychology of lying:

Another reason for promoting lying is what economists sometimes call loyalty filters. If you want to ascertain if someone is truly loyal to you, ask them to do something outrageous or stupid. If they balk, then you know right away they aren’t fully with you. That too is a sign of incipient mistrust within the ruling clique, and it is part of the same worldview that leads Trump to rely so heavily on family members.

Each time the Leftists repeat a lie, such as that Donald Trump mocked a disabled reporter, it unifies their base by forcing loyalty. Those who are unquestioning will repeat the lie, and this cows others into accepting it as truth.

Another example can be found in this entertaining Leftist analysis of cherry-picking, which is a classic Leftist technique for making their assumptions seem to be reasonable conclusions:

One striking feature of people who hold science-skeptic views is that they are often just as educated, and just as interested in science, as the rest of us. The problem is not about whether they are exposed to information, but about whether the information is processed in a balanced way. It manifests itself in what Matthew Hornsey (University of Queensland) describes as “thinking like a lawyer,” in that people cherry-pick which pieces of information to pay attention to “in order to reach conclusions that they want to be true.”

…Dan Kahan (Yale University) agrees, finding in their research that “the deposition is to construe evidence in identity-congruent rather than truth-congruent ways, a state of disorientation that is pretty symmetric across the political spectrum.”

…”In our research, we find that people treat facts as relevant more when the facts tend to support their opinions,” says Campbell. “When the facts are against their opinions, they don’t necessarily deny the facts, but they say the facts are less relevant.”

This psychology exemplifies backward thinking: people form conclusions based on what they will, intend or desire to be true, and then select the facts that support those conclusions.

However, one might view all of Leftism as an exercise in begging-the-question fallacies, such as the idea of equality itself. Assuming that all humans are equal in reasoning ability, the argument goes, there is no reason they should not be politically and socially equal as well.

In contrast to that assumption, reality shows us wide divergence among humans in ability, morality and inclinations, all of which factor into the decision-making process of logical analysis, called “reason” by the thinkers of The Enlightenment™ and afterwards.

A classic example of this could be found throughout the Trump campaign: assuming that diversity is a good thing, they “reasoned,” it is bad if a candidate does not emphasize diversity has his primary goal.

The Left rose through a singular power: a simple idea that made people feel comfortable in their social group, binding them together into a band to conquer all so that it would serve this idea.

For that reason, it makes sense not to say that Leftists are individually totalitarian, but that the thinking of Leftism is inherently totalitarian and individual Leftists will not be satisfied until they achieve a state that is both totalitarian and reality-denying.

The nature of ideology, after all, is to replace reality. It is the anti-reality. It tells you not how things work, but how they should according to human social logic. Leftism is at war with reality.

As a variant of Crowdism, Leftism is based in individualism. Every individual in the group wants guaranteed acceptance by the group. For this reason, they form a gang to make this so, but while their method is collectivism, their motivation is individualism.

What gives Crowdism power is the transfer of society from cooperative — where all people work unequally toward a goal that all understand — to control-based structures, where a formal goal is set up and applied equally to all in order to maintain power structures despite the fragmentation of society into many special interest groups, with individualists being one of these.

This gives rise to dark organization or a counter-current within society, formed of the individualist gang, that operates against its goals. Special interest groups do not share the goal of society as a whole, and therefore become parasitic: they take from the whole to support their own agendas.

For these reasons, the gang/cult of the parasite is always in motion. Its agenda never rests because it has hacked the human brain with a simple pleasing concept that short-cuts everything else. “If everyone is accepted, no one is at risk, and there will be no conflict,” is its underlying appeal, and the very fact of this simplification makes the meme powerful. It appeals to fear.

Since its motive is always conquest from within, the Crowd uses a number of hooks to short-circuit the psychology of others, and these in turn shape its own thinking into a pathological (repetitive without regard for results) obsession. This mental state can be recognized by the following internal cycles:

Begging the Question. To advance itself, Leftism uses this fallacy to transition political ideas to perceived social morality ideas. As we see with political correctness, the basic form is to assert that certain things are universally good, and therefore that in the converse, anyone who opposes those ideas is bad. The basic form of the fallacy is as follows:

The fallacy of circular argument, known as petitio principii (“begging the question”), occurs when the premises presume, openly or covertly, the very conclusion that is to be demonstrated (example: “Gregory always votes wisely.” “But how do you know?” “Because he always votes Libertarian.”).

A special form of this fallacy, called a vicious circle, or circulus in probando (“arguing in a circle”), occurs in a course of reasoning typified by the complex argument in which a premise p1 is used to prove p2; p2 is used to prove p3; and so on, until pn − 1 is used to prove pn; then pn is subsequently used in a proof of p1, and the whole series p1, p2, . . . , pn is taken as established (example: “McKinley College’s baseball team is the best in the association [ pn = p3]; they are the best because of their strong batting potential [ p2]; they have this potential because of the ability of Jones, Crawford, and Randolph at the bat [ p1].” “But how do you know that Jones, Crawford, and Randolph are such good batters?” “Well, after all, these men are the backbone of the best team in the association [ p3 again].”).

Strictly speaking, petitio principii is not a fallacy of reasoning but an ineptitude in argumentation: thus the argument from p as a premise to p as conclusion is not deductively invalid but lacks any power of conviction, since no one who questioned the conclusion could concede the premise.

The final line may be the most important: this argument type is a linguistic sleight-of-hand, and the only reason it works is that the premise is associated with universal moral good, a concept that itself is an assumption. But because of its appearance in a social setting, the argument seems convincing because universal acceptance is a necessary basic attribute of socializing in large and thus broad groups. This is how the Crowd forms.

For example, consider the Leftist argument for diversity: variety is good, therefore we need ethnic variety. The only way to oppose this seems to be to criticize the conclusion of the argument, when the real solution is to attack the assumption and the inexact language that allows it to seem relevant. Variety is good in certain contexts, and only certain types of variety, and these do not analogize to civilizations very well.

The Left moves into circulus in probando by stacking its assumptions: “Because (we assume that) morality is universal, (we assume that) diversity is good, and since (we assume that) diversity is working so well, we need to expand the program.” In fact, all of Leftism can be seen as a circulus in probando starting with the idea that personal intent is more important than reality — the core of individualism and The Enlightenment™ — and moving to universalism, democratization and finally, to the extension of those principles to other areas. Diversity might be viewed as ethnic democracy, welfare as subsidized universalism, and strong state control as democratization of power.

Rationalism. Humans like to think that reason alone will bring them to correct answers, but they forget that our reasoning is shaped by our minds and must correspond to a reality more complex than our minds. Reason is thus not a singular thing, but many grades of an idea, and in addition to that, it varies with the individual.

For those reasons, saying that reason will guide us to correct answers necessarily overloads our minds with the imposition of the idea that all people are the same, and that reason works like a calculator, when in fact it is more varied. That in turn creates the curse of rationalism which is that it enables people to have tunnel vision by identifying a plausible answer and then finding facts to support it, instead of assessing all facts and finding a model which fits all of the known data.

Rationalism in this sense is not essentially distinct from rationalization, or developing a way of visualizing an unfortunate event as a positive one. In this case, the unfortunate event is civilization collapse, and so instead of fighting it, the Left rationalizes it and directs its attention away from fixing the problem to finding a way to feel good about the problem. Both rationalism and rationalization start by accepting a perception and then altering facts by filtering out those that do not conform to the thesis so that the perception appears not just true but inevitable.

Control. When cooperation can no longer exist because society is pulling itself apart into special interest groups, control appears: force everyone to go through the same procedures, or “means” versus “ends” or goals, equally or in the same way, so that details can be managed from central control or through a centralized narrative, even if independently interpreted as is the case with egalitarianism, the founding idea of the Left.

The modern method can be seen as Social Control, or use of the threat of ostracism and reward for making people feel good as dual pincers of the control mechanism. Guilt is the primary weapon there: those who are not ideologically conforming become aware that others will be “upset” or “offended” by their acts, and are made to feel bad not about the consequences of their actions in reality, but in the perceptions of others.

This process of regulating people through public appearance proves deadly effective because humans — like our Simian forebears — are social creatures. Alienation does not require government intervention, and because it causes others to fear for themselves if they are associated with the alienated person, spreads like a disease. It is more effective than any other means of punishment because the consequences are all-pervasive.

When noticed by humans, social control is referred to as peer pressure with all the implications of collective punishment that this indicates. A small group, like a local community, fears being associated with bad ideas, so it punishes those who have them. In addition, this group will punish a group within it for deviation from the norm. This means that the individual is totally dependent on the group for behavioral cues and must follow whatever is decided, in an inversion of democracy but an extension of democratization. When all people have a voice, conformity results, and then it is made mandatory.

Crybullying. To advance a petitio principii fallacy, one must act as if the assumption therein is normal and universally liked. This requires playing the role of an innocent, benevolent and passive party. However, when someone refuses the assumption, this requires the fallacy advocate to act the role of wounded victim, which then justifies (synonyms: rationalizes; excuses) retaliation.

This produces a type of weaponized passive aggression or indirect bullying. The Leftist needs to appear somewhere, insist on a Leftist method, and then act wounded while summoning the troops — the rest of the gang/cult — to attack. This enables Leftists to infiltrate any area of society and, by using their passive aggressive “victimhood” narrative, force others to conform to what the Leftist desires.

The psychology created by the above cannot be properly viewed as a philosophy, but an inversion of philosophy: instead of finding reasons to act in certain ways, it assumes basic human impulses — which like most undisciplined things, are usually wrong — are correct and then invents explanations for those that make them seem reasonable.

That however implicates a philosophy with two branches:

Means Over Ends. Leftism embraces a classic “means over ends” analysis. In that view, the goal does not matter so much as behaving in a correct way, in this case for social approval. That allows necessarily goals to be ignored if the methods needed are upsetting or inconvenient to the group, which “wags the dog” because then instead of thinking toward purpose, people think away from purpose and let methods become a substitute for goals. This rationalizes the lack of purpose inherent to a dying civilization and creates an imitative society where people repeat past successful acts without knowledge of what made them successful, simply by placing trust in the method and being afraid to contemplate goals.

Cause And Effect. Normally, we see our actions as the cause of an event which had certain effects, or outcomes. In the inverted world of Leftism, cause is removed by the assumption of moral goodness to methods, which signifies that the methods are both effect and cause. This removes the human ability to see cause, and by declaring the irrelevance of ends or effects, obliterates our ability to formulate independent goals. This creates atomized, infantilized, and domesticated people who depend on strong authority for guidance, as their acts otherwise are goalless and therefore become self-destructive in addition to pointless.

The root of this philosophy is a resistance to life itself: people would prefer to be gods in their own minds than to realize their place in an order — structure, hierarchy, flow of events — that makes life what it is. This is the essence of control within the human mind. It rejects all that is natural and replaces it with a world composed entirely of human thoughts, feelings and judgments. This is comforting to the under-confident and neurotic.

All high-level societies die through some form of Crowdism, which is usually Leftist. When a civilization is forming, its purpose is clear: create civilization, beat back nature and disease, and organize so that the pleasures of life are possible. After that point, civilization is taken for granted because most people cannot see the reason to choose a new purpose, since they have the effects of the work that created that civilization.

Dysgenics factor in here as well, especially in cities large enough to be anonymous. People need only to find a job, rent a place to live, and purchase food from street vendors. Everything else is optional. It is not surprising that modern Leftists are enamored of the job/rent/restaurant lifestyle. This, and the advances in institutionalized hygiene and safety that save people from their own bad choices, create people who are living but have no will to live other than the mechanical and material process of survival itself. With this, purpose and bravery die.

Anti-goals afflict successful civilizations only. One mode of thought, embraced by primitivists and Nietzscheans to varying degrees, is that civilization — if it wishes to survive — needs to back off of “perfecting” everyday life, and should preserve dangers. The idea of social Darwinism that is not in love with jobs and money holds that there should be no externalized costs to individual actions, such that each individual faces the consequences of his actions including potential death. This means strict punishment for any costs incurred to society by the individual, a lack of things like insurance and uniform methods of survival, and daily challenges so that the clueless weed themselves out.

Another possibility for civilization survival is to design it such that every action must have a purpose, and the results are compared to that purpose, with those who achieve parity between intention and reality being promoted in a hierarchy. This creates constant internal evolution and at the very least disenfranchises those who are inept at everything but collecting social approval. In other words, society must be less “social” and more purpose-driven.

Diversity presents a fundamental problem in any society because with the presence of a single person from the Other group, either social standards must be widened to include the standards of both self and Other, or those who are Other will be at a disadvantage and appear to be victims. That in turn jump-starts the begging-the-question fallacy by making it easily observed that the Other is failing, and assuming that this is bad, and therefore that “change” must occur.

Above all else, we must remember what Walt Kelley told us years ago: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” Inside of each of us is a monkey. This monkey reacts to life out of fear and lives in a miasma of superstition, projection and denial through filtering out inconvenient and upsetting information. This monkey is driven by impulse, which leads to rationalization of that impulse, and reverts thought. The healthiest civilizations are disciplined more in terms of private thoughts than public behavior, but not through Control; instead, they aim for realism and other methods of refining the spirit to be rigid about its thinking and to push down the monkey impulses.

Our inner monkey resents life for not being equal to our intent as individuals. That choice forces us to either accept reality as it is (nihilism) or to accept only ourselves, then rationalize that denial as good, and in turn blot out reality without a consensual hallucination of human thoughts, feelings and judgments. Since this has its root in the monkey impulse toward self-importance in defiance of a reality structured otherwise, it is also a regression and the source of the dark organization that is Crowdism.

We have come to recognize Typical Leftist Behavior (TLB) with increasing frequency as the achievement of Leftist goals (diversity, equality, democratization, globalism) has made reality totally unknown to most people, resulting in terrible consequences when their ideas are put into practice, as usually happens with reality-denial. TLB takes many forms but all are based in the schema above.

The threats in front of us — Leftism, The Enlightenment,&trade civilization collapse — are themselves effects of this inner transformation of human beings. We no longer intend to achieve good results; we focus instead on making our feelings happy despite the darkness around us, but this deprives us of a sense that life can be a joy and a pleasure. That in turn pushes us toward more dark thoughts and behaviors.

Salvation for Western Civilization begins when we not just reverse this process, but commit ourselves instead toward a purpose which replaces the original purpose of survival that kept our civilization united in its early years. We also must protect ourselves genetically, so that we are not replaced with the Other, even in traces, as those alter what we were and through atavisms of that, what we must be again.

The Left won because it had a simple idea that dominated all other thinking. The solution is not to try to replicate that, but to understand that simple ideas which dominate are in themselves a terrible notion, and that instead, we need a more nuanced, purpose-driven and realistic view of life. As Leftist society crashes in chaos around us, more are turning toward this idea or something like it.